December 2009
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2009 Year in Review
2009 was a big year for synthetic biology in the academic press. Several journals had special issues devoted entirely to the topic, most recently Nature Biotechnology, but also Molecular BioSystems, The Journal of the Royal Society Interface, Systems and Synthetic Biology, and EMBO Reports with excellent research articles, reviews, and fascinating commentaries on economic, ethical, and social...
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The Top 100 Science Lecture Videos →
For people with lots of time on their hands, or a relaxing winter vacation coming up, the top 100 Science Lecture Videos from News Junkie Post, including Richard Dawkins, Kary Mullis, Steven Chu, Craig Venter, Stephen Hawking, E.O. Wilson, and a whole lot of other good stuff!
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What's in a name?
Synthetic biology has been used to describe many scientific activities for the past hundred years, and is still far from a concrete definition. Nature biotechnology asked 20 experts in the field how they define synthetic biology, leading to a great article that highlights many of the different pursuits of synthetic biology researchers as well as the common emphasis on engineering principles....
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“If biological engineering were aviation, it would be at the birdman stage: some...”
– Unbottling the genes, editorial from a special issue of Nature Biotechnology on synthetic biology
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Evolution, ecology and the engineered organism
Synthetic biology is fascinating and scary because of evolution. Evolution leads to the incredible diversity of biological systems that synthetic biology can draw from to create new designs, and evolution can be used in the lab to optimize synthetic biology pathways and make them better. However, because cells evolve and interact with the environment, synthetic biology is scary—what will...
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Cribsheet for Synthetic Biology
SEED magazine is one of my favorite resources for science news. They always have great articles, interesting perspectives, beautiful design, and useful content. Each issue has really fun pull-outable “cribsheets” about different trendy science topics, now available online as “downloadable tool[s] for living in the 21st century.” I’ve had the synthetic biology...
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“Are these microchips really behaving like neurons? Or has the simulation taken a...”
– Reverse-Engineering : The Frontal Cortex